22 de agosto de 2006

Ciência

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Young children's decisions about future mired in the presentPosted on: August 22, 2006 6:20 AM, by Dave Munger

A new study finds that 3- to 5-year-olds appear to conflate their future needs with those of the present. Young children who have been fed pretzels and are thirsty are more likely to say they'll need water tomorrow than pretzels. If they haven't eaten pretzels, they'll say they will need pretzels tomorrow.

One of the researchers, Cristina Atance, said the research will help adults understand childrens' needs:

We often see children object when mom asks them to put on their coat in a warm house before going outside into the cold, or when she tells them to bring water to the park when they are not yet hot and thirsty. Although we may think that the child is simply being disobedient, it may be that they don't understand that they might be cold or thirsty later.

The researchers found no difference in the responses of 3-, 4-, or 5-year-olds. They plan next to explore when children are accurately able to separate future needs from present needs. I'll submit that my 14-year-old isn't much different.

In a discovery that could shed light on the development of the human brain, University of Oregon researchers determined that infants as young as six months old can recognize simple arithmetic errors.

The researchers used puppets to portray simple addition problems. For example, in order to illustrate the incorrect equation 1 + 1 = 1, researchers showed infants one puppet, then added a second. A board was then raised to block the infant's view of both puppets, and one was removed. When the board was lowered, only a single puppet remained.

To gauge the infants' ability to detect the error, researchers recorded the number of seconds the babies spent looking at the puppet.

According to the study, babies ranging from six to nine months old looked at incorrect solutions 1.1 seconds longer than correct ones. This extended viewing correlated with EEG measurements showing higher activity in a frontal area of the brain that is known to be involved in error detection in adults. The team's findings are published in the August 7th online edition of The Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

Not to be glib, but if babies can do it why can't the average person working a McJob? What happens between infancy and adulthood that turns people into total idiots?

Oh wait...I remember...television, dating, middle school, their parents, and the other wonders of American life. So I guess it does make sense then.